


Enfold the Sun

by lewilder



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Eventual Zutara, F/M, Postwar AU, Starts with Canon Relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-17
Updated: 2015-05-21
Packaged: 2018-03-13 12:08:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3380978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lewilder/pseuds/lewilder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The war is over and everything has changed, especially for those who sacrificed the most.  Katara returns to the Southern Water Tribe only to find she no longer feels at home in the land she fought to save.  Unsure of her future, she takes a path that would have been unthinkable in past generations:  she travels to the Fire Nation for refuge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. gather up your tears

.

.

.

There is time enough for anything in the vast expanse of peace.

Time stretches on after the war, hanging like a speck of sand in an hourglass, with an endless supply of grains to follow it.

It’s relief, a sort of heady fullness, that makes each day where there is no war seem precious and also endless.

Katara realizes, one sunny afternoon drinking tea at Iroh’s shop, alone beside a low table that stretches beside her, that this is what it means to be young.

They have never had that opportunity before, not since they were _children_. It’s frightening and she feels ill at ease in her skin.

She hasn’t been young in nearly a decade.

Katara sets down her teacup with care but doesn’t release it from the curl of her fingertips. The china is beautiful. The china is worn. Iroh sets out new cups for his paying customers, but for his guests—his friends—his growing brood of surrogate grandchildren from nations he once fought to extinguish—he brings out older cups, ones whose edges are not quite cracked, that have stories to tell.

She and her friends are not quite cracked around the edges, not yet.

Katara looks at the teacup, resting in the afternoon sun. She has seen exquisite things—in the Earth King’s palace, in the Bei Fongs’ estate, in the Fire Lord’s halls (distantly, as seen in a dream through the wreckage and smoke of war)—and they do not impress her beyond their craftsmanship, their artistry. But this teacup warms her heart, sends a feeling of familiarity through her veins.

It was here during the war.

And it survives afterward.

And so will they, in time.

Katara squints her eyes so that she can only see the blue-and-white blur that is the teacup she now holds in her fingers, solitary amidst sun-sparks. She is an artist herself, and she recognizes skill when she sees it, but all that glitters holds no claim to her heart beyond the sparkling of the ocean.

Katara peels her fingertips away from the smooth, lacquered surface and breathes deeply.

The sun is hot and still and she is used to that from her travels. She finds a certain enjoyment in sunshine. Memories of cold, of freshness and frost-tinged breaths and days-long blizzards when all the world is white never quite leave the back of her mind, but she questions their comfort now.

She doesn’t know if she can return to home and hearth after what she has seen and done, after what war has done to her. She doesn’t know if it will be asked of her, when it comes to that. Aang is here with her in Ba Sing Se—they are the last of their friends to leave. Even Zuko and Mai have already returned to the Fire Nation, because Zuko has a country to run.

But Aang—Aang has the world at his feet and he doesn’t know where to start his explorations.

So they linger on Iroh’s hospitality, she and he, and Katara knows from the way Aang looks at her what he expects.

They will travel the world together. They will solve the world’s problems. They will marry, someday. There will be children, someday. (There is an Air Nation to rebuild, after all.)

But for now, Aang only wants to be free. And he is, for this brief moment. He is only twelve, and he thinks that he has cast the world’s weight from his shoulders because he has disabled former Fire Lord Ozai and placed the usurper’s son on the throne. But he is the Avatar, and his duty will follow him for the rest of his life.

The Fire Nation, officially, is no longer a threat to the world.

The Earth Kingdom, the Water Tribes, the Air Nation—the last airbender—they are free to rebuild, to restore, without tyrannical interference. 

But it will not be as easy as that, and despite the lazy calm of heat that stifles her fears, tamps them down into deeper, more recessed parts of her heart, Katara knows that the calm will not last, because rebuilding after a century of oppression will not be easy.

People are not all as forgiving, or as tolerant, as Aang.

Katara sits alone on the balcony and watches the busy streets below her. She can’t make out individual voices from here, and the people going about their business blend into a background hum.

After the remaining tea has gone cold in the teapot, Aang comes for her. The sun has long passed the noontide mark but has not yet settled into the golden slant of late afternoon.

In the heat of the day, Katara walks with Aang through the streets of Ba Sing Se.

They walk down to the Middle Ring, and its name is true in more ways than one. Here, divided opinions rattle about like the scattered pig-chicken feathers that follow an escaped fowl from one of the merchants’ pens.

Aang hears the crowing praise: he is the Avatar and the world is saved.

Katara hears the muttered discontent: the world is left more of a mess than it was, and people want the Fire Nation to suffer.

Her first inkling that Aang hears the negative, too, comes when he squeezes her hand a little tighter after a cloth merchant mock-whispers a particularly nasty barb about Aang’s weakness for not killing Ozai.

Aang begins to turn, his fingers tight around hers, to open his mouth to confront the merchant, but Katara tightens her grip, too. “Aang, don’t. It’s what he wants.”

“But Katara—”

“Please.” She makes her expression hard, because he needs to learn. People won’t be won by midafternoon arguments when their minds are clearly set against him, and the marketplace is no place for the Avatar State.

Aang falters, and a little bit of the light fades from his eyes. “Okay.”

They walk on, and hear the merchant behind them. “Look at the Avatar, letting his little girlfriend boss him around.”

Another voice says, “Who lets a kid like him make important decisions, anyway?”

“Keep walking, Aang.” He is a feeble presence by her side now, a confused, sad boy. She squeezes his hand again, for encouragement.

He smiles, just a little.

He smiles for her.

.

.

.

Back at the tea shop, they drink tea with Iroh and talk.

“Even though the war’s over, people still hate the Fire Nation.”

Aang’s eyes are wide and worried when he speaks. His tea—a new blend Iroh insists they try; “good for the heart,” he says—is nearly untouched and his fingertips fidget as if he wants to bend air, bend something, make a movement that will make things right.

But it’s not as simple as that.

Across the tea table from the young, eager, zealous Avatar—and these are all good traits, in their place, Katara thinks as she catalogues them in her mind—the old man Iroh sits. He is calm in contrast to Aang’s inner storm, the worries that have crisscrossed his face in wrinkles masked behind peaceful joviality.

A Fire Nation general dressed in Earth Kingdom green.

A teashop proprietor.

And a friend.

As a friend, Iroh does his best to break the news gently to Aang.

“It was a long war,” Iroh sighs. “It will take more than defeating Ozai to put the world at right.”

Aang’s brow crinkles. “I know,” he says. “I know that, but shouldn’t people be thankful, at least? To me, to us, for everything we’ve done to save them? Instead, they’re just—they just act like they want another war! Like they don’t want to settle down and be happy again.”

“A sword drawn for war is not so easily sheathed.” Iroh raises his brow over his cup of tea as he sips. “The people need time, Aang.”

Time is what Aang has the most of, out of any of them. He is the youngest and at the same time he is the oldest, with lifetimes stretching behind him and ahead of him. Time is all the Avatar has, it seems.

But Aang is young, still, despite everything, and impatient. “How can I give them time?” he asks. “I want to solve things. I thought ending the war would. How can I make sure people don’t start another war?”

“You can’t.” Katara joins the conversation. “You can’t make people do anything, Aang. But you can talk to them. Travel. Make peace where you can.” She peels a smile from her lips and says, “Remember the Great Divide, how you helped the warring clans make peace?”

Aang brightens. “Yeah. Yeah, I can do that again.”

“Not everybody wants a war, Aang,” Katara says. No one should, not after they’ve lived one for their entire lives, but no one knows quite what to make of peace.

Iroh agrees with a warm laugh. “I used to be a general, and look at me now, serving tea instead of waging war.”

The late summer air is heavy and still, their host’s geniality flickering between them. Iroh holds out the teapot. “Would you like another cup?”

.

.

.

_tbc._


	2. so i cross my heart

. 

.

.

“You’re coming with me, right?”

Katara knew it would come to this eventually. But even as Aang looks at her, his wide grey eyes hopeful and expectant, she feels the wrong words forming on her lips. “I don’t know, Aang. I’d like to, but I’d also like to visit the South Pole again. I want to see my family.”

A shadow darkens his face for just an instant, because he doesn’t have a family anymore, and she feels a pang of guilt for reminding him of that—he is _the last airbender_ , after all—but she stands firm.

She wants to see her family again, to see the home that still calls her soul sometimes, to see if she still fits there, in the cold and the ice and the tundra, before she decides what to do with the next steps of her days.

The darkness is pushed back by a grin as Aang agrees. “We can go penguin sledding! I need to talk to the Southern Water Tribe, anyway. They lost so much in the war. And after that, we can leave again. It’ll be great, Katara. We’ll fly around and see the world like we’ve done this past year. Only we won’t be fighting a war anymore—we’ll be helping people make peace!”

Katara’s heart twists. He has so much hope, this boy, and it’s heartbreaking that she can see it because she’s the one her friends tease for having that fault in abundance.

She smiles back at him and they head to their own rooms to pack their bags.

When they fly again, they head south.

On the morning of their departure from the walled city, Iroh bids them farewell with his usual smile. He tucks gifts for Katara’s father and grandparents into their packs and hugs both her and Aang before they climb up on Appa’s back.

Appa’s saddle is familiar and sun-worn. It smells of warm air and sky bison and Katara doesn’t realize it until they’re a few hours into their flight, surrounded by sun and sky and the ever-present wind that comes with traveling on Appa, but it feels empty now, when it’s just her and Aang.

It’s never been just the two of them. Their friends were always with them before now.

Momo still chitters around when he’s not napping in the full sunshine, but he doesn’t count, not really.

For the length of the first afternoon, after Aang has exhausted himself by pointing out anything on their horizon he finds interesting, the two of them sit side by side on Appa’s head in silence. Aang holds the reins and the quiet between them is companionable.

The closed, defined space between them feels safe, even, amidst the rushing winds.

Aang sits beside her, elbow barely touching her arm, and his gaze is far off, beyond Appa, toward the edge of the land. Even sitting, he is like the winds, always moving. His toe taps gently, his fingers wobble around the reins.

He is an airbender through and through, even though he can bend all four elements—five, if Katara counts the energybending he used to immobilize Ozai.

Katara wonders, looking out over the land below them, green and distant and ever-stretching, if Aang would consider his energybending as thick with conflict as her bloodbending.

She closes her eyes to the bright sun; she doesn’t think so.

He sees it as a peaceful resolution—he didn’t kill Ozai, after all.

But the ability to take someone’s bending away—and to give it, just the same?—perhaps that is a power just as dread and mighty as the ability to reach into someone’s body and bend their life to her will.

But perhaps not.

Aang sits up on his heels beside her and points to a clearing in the woods. “Let’s camp there tonight.”

Katara agrees and leaves her thoughts behind in favor of the everyday tasks of setting up camp, making dinner, and settling Appa down for the night.

The habit is comforting now that her world has lost another layer of purpose and structure, for now the world is saved and she drifts in a sea of her own making.

Aang chatters throughout most of their evening, talking again about the day’s travels, and gives her a quick kiss goodnight before they settle into their blankets by the fire for sleep.

Nearby, Aang falls asleep quickly, but Katara spends a long time awake, staring up at the moon and stars.

.

.

.

Katara blinks awake to morning sun before Aang the next day. Without Zuko to drag him, protesting, to early-morning firebending practice, Aang appreciates his sleep.

In the morning veil of insect-hums, Katara makes breakfast. The rice porridge bubbles hot and thick over the fire and she digs into one of their bags to find some sweetened dried fruit she’d stowed away for mornings like this, mornings of quiet and hope when she wants to do something nice for Aang.

It’s not egg custard, but it’s what she can do, for now.

After Aang awakens, they eat their porridge and drink their tea and climb back up on Appa.

As they travel together, she finds that this is the start of most of their days.

The journey from Ba Sing Se toward the South Pole passes smoothly, for the most part. Aang makes it fun, with airbending tricks and unbridled enthusiasm for each place Appa comes to rest for the night.

In most of the towns where they stop, Aang is greeted with praise. He is the Avatar, the world’s savior. Katara and Aang hear murmurs of discontentment, undercurrents of rancor, but mostly people are pleased.

They just want to be left alone and the naysayers are a minority, although they are sometimes a vocal one.

Just like when they first came to Kyoshi Island, Aang revels in the praise. He airbends, poses for portraits, kisses babies’ heads that are as bald as his own.

He loves people and he always leaves a place feeling as though they’ve made new friends.

Katara hugs him and smiles along as he talks about the people they’ve left behind each day for colder southern stars.

.

.

.

As they travel, Katara notices that little things start to bother her.

She realizes, a few towns in, that Aang never introduces her to the people they talk to. If someone asks, his face lights up, as if in pleased surprise, and he says, “Oh! This is Katara. She’s a waterbending master.”

Sometimes he grins sheepishly and adds, “She’s my girlfriend.”

But he never makes a move to introduce her first; he only does it if people ask.

Often enough, they do, but otherwise Aang is content to soak up the praise on his own while Katara demurs in the background.

“Why are you sad, Katara?” Aang asks one day while they visit a town in the southern Earth Kingdom.

“I just—” She begins to tell him, but then she remembers Kyoshi Island and bites her tongue. He’s sweet, her boyfriend, but his apologies there haven’t translated into any change in his behavior. She should tell him, probably. But not today, not when there is bright sunshine above them and a marketplace full of baubles to browse. She doesn’t want to fight or to hurt him. “I’m not sad,” she says instead.

Aang twists his fingers in with hers and turns to the next person who stops them on the street with a wide smile.

Katara doesn’t say anything, but it rankles.

And it rankles that on nights after he lets her fall to the background, he still assumes he has the right to kiss her.

Their kisses are never quite as long as at the goodbye tea with their friends in Ba Sing Se. She’d felt a little odd after that. Aang is only twelve, after all. And she’s—well, she’s only fourteen, but she’s almost fifteen, and she’s starting to wonder if maybe this boy who at once thinks she’s the moon and stars and sun and takes her for granted like the daily gift of sunlight, if maybe he might be too much of a _boy_ , after all.

Doubts flit through her mind sometimes, and vague discomfort joins the butterflies in her stomach when Aang sends shy smiles her way after he kisses her, and it’s like an itching under her skin, a feeling of not knowing. A feeling of not being where she fits but not knowing where to go.

She _likes_ Aang—he’s a sweet boy and sometimes she thinks she could love him forever, because he is ancient but he makes her feel young, and she is young but most of the time she feels so ancient—but she’s still confused.

But habit is powerful and Aang is energetic, so Katara lets herself get swept up into their travels.

Weeks pass, and they follow the paths of the birds—Sokka had told her about those, the seasonal migrations that birds of the northern regions make towards the south each year—information he’d gleaned from Wan Shi Tong’s library before the entire thing fell to bits, and she still hates to think of that terrible collapse of sand and murderous owl-spirit—until they surpass them, dip below the places most birds go, and dive on Appa’s back into snow.

.

.

.

_tbc._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> subtitled, how not to build a healthy relationship. here’s looking at you, katara and aang.


	3. but i made it home alive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the atla wiki says that kanna is katara's paternal grandmother. i hope that's right.

.

.

.

It hurts to breathe.

Katara had forgotten that, in her long travels away from her homeland. The last time she was anywhere this cold was nearly a year ago, in the North Pole.

It’s not even winter yet—only early fall—and already her lungs ache with bitter cold.

Perhaps her time away from home has changed her more than she’d thought.

Aang, ever unaffected by the cold, tumbles off of Appa’s saddle and into the waiting crowd of people. _Her people_.

Katara follows more slowly and breathes deeply into the fur of her father’s collar when he wraps her in a tight hug.

“ _Katara_.”

“ _Dad_.”

“You’re home.”

“I missed you, Dad.”

“I missed you, too.” Her father's arms are tight around her, and Katara lets herself relax into his embrace. This is not like their reunion before the Day of Black Sun or even quite like their reunion after his escape from the Boiling Rock; there is no long string of absent, unaccounted days stretching behind them, no war threatening now. This is their arms wrapped around each other with wounds begun to heal, and for a moment Katara can forget that he was gone; forget that _she_ was gone. She breathes in the frigid air through her nose, mixed with the smell of cold fur and distant smoke and animal fat. As she squeezes her eyes shut against the tears, the weight in her heart lessens.

Her father’s chin raises from the top of her head, the moment passes, and the familiar ache fills her chest again. Hakoda's hug is as steady as ever, but their tribe and their family are not the same constant that they were when she was a child.

When Katara opens her eyes and tilts her head to look at Hakoda, she sees that he is looking over her head at Aang, who is asking the children he met on his first sojourn with the Tribe whether or not they’d like to go penguin sledding once he and Katara settle in. And from Katara's view, the weight in Hakoda’s eyes is a palpable thing, laden and laced with questions he won’t ask now.

She doesn’t know if she knows the answers, anyway.

Aang approaches with a light burst of airbending. He floats to the snowy ground in front of Hakoda and Katara.

Like a proper Avatar, a proper political representative, he clasps his hands and bows in deference to Hakoda, the chief. And Katara sees, for a fleeting instant, a glimpse of the old, old knowledge in his eyes.

It’s like when he and Zuko spoke at Zuko’s coronation. They stood in front of the assembled crowd and spoke with the revelations born of pain and war—and even after that, Aang can still turn around and act like the only thing that matters is penguin sledding.

Katara admires this innocence Aang carries with him, even after the carnage he's seen and the losses he carries, but she carries her own wounds differently. They swirl in her soul and carve hollows where Aang's seem to echo through his body and leave with a breath, lost to the breeze. She's seen him at his worst, and even then he only want to help others find peace.

She wants to help people, too, but she lacks Aang's boundless faith.

The sun slants above the horizon, clear light cast onto the snow, and Katara balls her fingers underneath her gloves. Her hands are cold.

Aang rises from his bow, and beside her, her father clasps his hands and bows in return. “Avatar Aang.”

“Chief Hakoda.”

“You honor us with your visit, Avatar.”

With an ingenuous smile, her boyfriend is back to being himself. Just Aang, not the Avatar, if there is any tangible separation between the two.

In her heart, Katara knows that there isn't, but despite his performance at the end of the war, there are parts of being the Avatar that Aang hasn't grown into just yet, and there is still a sigh of relief that echoes in his posture and the corners of his eyes when he switches back to being just a boy.

“Yeah, well—” he blushes a little “—Katara wanted to see her family again, so we came here.” The smile fades, but the sparkle of life in his eyes doesn’t. He is eager; he wants to help. “And your people, they lost so much in the war. I wanted to see, before I go to the other nations, if there’s anything you need. Or want. Or if there’s anything that could make peace easier.”

“We will talk, Avatar Aang,” Hakoda says. He reaches out and clasps the boy's shoulder and a smile crinkles the edges of _his_ eyes, all worry pushed aside for the time. “For now, let's get you kids settled for your stay.”

The village is just like Katara remembers it—a small collection of fur-and-ice structures that lie scattered by the icy bay. It is fuller now with the men returned home than it was when she left.

She breathes in the air, feels it settle with a sting in her lungs, and takes Aang's proffered hand as they walk through the crowd with her father toward the structures.

.

.

.

Hakoda takes Aang to his lodgings first. “You'll be staying with Bato,” he says, and the lean warrior comes out at the sound of his name.

Bato's smile is easy and Katara remembers when his was the first Water Tribe face she had seen since she'd left home. Now, Bato's wife Nuniq steps out behind him and bows to Aang. “Avatar Aang,” she says, “it is so nice to see you again.”

Aang bows in return. “It's nice to see you again, too,” he says with a smile.

No one could ever replace Katara's mother in her life, but Nuniq had come as close as she thought anyone could. Bato and Hakoda are close friends, and after Kya's murder, Nuniq had joined forces with Kanna to ensure that Katara and Sokka were looked after.

Hakoda had taken his canoe and paddled among the ice floes and done what many men who had lost their beloveds to the Fire Nation had done—he had hunted and killed and hunted and killed until the Tribe had more meat than usual to salt and smoke for that winter. The Tribe had been grateful, but no one had dared to thank him.

Often, he had walked alone into the howling winds. Sometimes, Bato had gone with him.

When Aang had awoken and come to the Tribe for the first time, it was Nuniq who always made sure the meal-pots in the main house had an offering without meat for the Avatar.

Katara steps her way around her father and goes to Nuniq for another of what will surely be a day full of hugs. Nuniq is round and solemn where Bato is spare and full of smiles, but both of them have bright eyes and they are a well suited match. It feels comforting to be in Nuniq's hug, although it is not quite the same comfort as her father's.

Nuniq smiles at Katara, a small smile that makes her usually solemn eyes crinkle around the corners. Katara is used to that expression, directed at her, although a pang shoots through her heart when she sees that Nuniq is also blinking back tears. “I worried about you, Katara,” Nuniq says, and Katara dives back in for another hug as unexpected tears prickle at her eyes, too.

“I missed you, Nuniq.”

There is another, new, small sadness in Hakoda's face when Katara pulls away. Her heart is sad again, because she knows he misses Kya still. She should be here, with them all—but if she were here, Katara might never have gone to war, and it might be a different sadness that fills them all, one of ongoing loss rather than past grief.

The war with the Fire Nation is over, but even the scabbed-over wounds sometimes seem fresh.

They walk inside Nuniq and Bato's house and Nuniq shows Aang where he will sleep. The boy doesn't have many possessions, and what few he does have are lodged on Appa at the moment. Katara makes a mental note to bring his extra clothes—his Avatar robes, which are a gift from the Fire Nation; the clothes he'd worn in the Fire Nation; and a spare outfit she'd made him buy in the Earth Kingdom _because you really can't go around wearing your Avatar robes—or your underwear—every time I need to wash your clothes—_ back from Appa later today.

One part of traveling during the war that Katara is sure she doesn't miss is doing everybody's laundry.

After thanking Bato and Nuniq, Katara and Aang follow Hakoda back to Katara's family home. When Katara steps inside, she is struck by how much _it hasn't changed_. The world around them has changed—the village and Tribe, too, have changed, and lost (lost for years on end), and mourned—but the contents of their home are almost exactly the same as when she left.

With the addition of a step-grandfather. She had forgotten about Pakku, in the excitement of returning home, and she startles when she sees him standing beside Gran Gran in the light of the cook-fire.

She bites her tongue, swallows her surprise, and lets Gran Gran wrap her in a hug.

This hug, too, is familiar, but her grandmother watches her with keen eyes when she leaves the embrace. Kanna knows what it is like to travel in hard times and to emerge changed, but she says nothing to Katara about that. Instead, Katara watches as her grandmother composes her face and asks, “You remember Pakku, don't you, Katara?”

“Of course she does.” Pakku's words come before Katara can answer, and she remembers the North Pole. She remembers their fight and their meetings afterwards.

Pakku had been kinder after he, too, had fled the North, when they had met again at the White Lotus camp. She wonders, now as then, if that was her grandmother's influence. Kanna is not an overly open or loving woman, but she does not tolerate nonsense.

She fled from her own tribe at nineteen, after all.

Still, Katara chokes on a near cough because Pakku still presumes to speak for her. She swallows and says, “I do,” her own smile a distant echo of Aang's—he has fallen in beside her and is already greeting their master with a bow. “How could I forget our introduction at the North Pole?”

Pakku frowns, but Gran Gran only nods. “You two have catching up to do,” she says. “I'll make sure you have time to talk later.”

Katara suspects Gran Gran has been waiting for this, but she is too busy cataloging the contents of their home to think on it now. She doesn't know whether to be comforted or horrified that so little has changed. In some ways, she irrationally thinks it should be different. _She_ is different, and so her home should be, too.

On the other hand, there is a comfort in sameness.

Her lungs expand and contract. She can _breathe_ here, even if it hurts. Where before she stung with the cold, now the fire-smoke bites at her breath.

The cooking utensils that hang from a beam over the cook-fire are the same ones they've used for years. Katara fights the urge to walk over and run her fingers over a plain-bone spoon, the one used for stirring the turtle-seal stew that feeds them through most of the winter. She can see that it's only a bit more worn than when she left. She breathes in, and imagines the smell of the thick, oily stew. Smoke from the fire fills her nostrils, and she tries to cough surreptitiously.

Gran Gran's eyes have been on her since she walked in the door, and Gran Gran catches her. Gran Gran always does.

“Don't tell me your time away has made you forget that you shouldn't breathe in the smoke from a cook-fire, Katara.” Gran Gran's words are disapproving, but the wrinkles around her eyes hold the hint of a smile.

She'd sent them off, Katara and Sokka, in the dawning of the last spring, and she won't say the words like Nuniq did, but—she worried. She will see, through her own method of examination, whether or not they have come back to her whole.

“I haven't forgotten, Gran Gran,” Katara says. She thinks the words mean something more than that, but she's not sure what promises they hold or which of those promises she can keep. “I cooked the whole time we were gone. I kept Sokka fed, and Aang, and everybody else, too.”

“She did,” Hakoda supplies when Katara pulls away from her grandmother, and when Katara glances at him, she sees pride in his expression. “I wasn't with their group for long, but I saw that she did a good job.” He cracks a lopsided grin, and for the first time, Katara realizes the possibility of Sokka, some two decades from now. “She learned from the best, Mom.”

“I sure did, Gran Gran.” Katara smiles, too.

They all remember the long days after Kya's death, when the only thing Katara _could_ do was learn to keep the house, because Sokka wouldn't and her father was wandering the ice, but they only smile. They don't bring up the past now.

“Katara!” In the space of that moment, Sokka bursts from behind one of the flaps of fabric that hang across the house, dividing it into somewhat separate rooms. “Hey, sis!” He hugs her tightly, then turns to Aang and hugs him, too. “I've missed you guys!”

“We've missed you, too, Sokka,” Katara says.

Sokka grins. “Of course you did.”

He slings an arm around her and they head off with Aang to gather their belongings from Appa. They carry clothes and the many gifts from Iroh and others back to Hakoda's house and take Aang's few belongings to Bato's.

In her old room, the one she still shares with Sokka, Katara arranges her things. She notices that Sokka has rigged up a new dividing blanket between their beds, and she is strangely grateful for it. They've spent their whole life sleeping near each other, even on their travels, but the division gives her the semblance of a place to retreat in solitude.

They both need that, now that they aren't clinging to each other for support, now that they need time to recover.

Katara didn't leave much behind and she doesn't bring many things with her, but she folds her new clothes neatly and tucks her new trinkets away inside her whalebone box.

The items—a tea set from Iroh, an ancient piece of hair jewelry from Zuko, an _honestly gained_ waterbending scroll from Piandao (one for her, just her, not the ones that Pakku gave to Aang), a bracelet she bought in an Earth Kingdom market—aren't as important as her friends and her experiences, but the memories are much harder to tuck away neatly in storage.

She finds places for her new clothes and trinkets, instead, then emerges with Sokka and Aang into the common room again.

Gran Gran sits near the fire, working a spindle with sure fingers as she spins from the summer's harvest of camel yak hair. The rest of their family, and some of the other villagers, sit nearby.

The Avatar has returned to their village and the war is ended; neither is a small event. People gather; people talk.

But Gran Gran catches Katara's eye and pats the empty space beside her. Katara walks over and sits down. She takes a spindle from the basket near her grandmother and gathers her own bit of hair to work as she sets it to spin.

For the rest of the evening, she listens and lets her fingers work in rote motion while others talk.

She is in her village, with her people, and it has been a long time since she has allowed herself to feel this tired.

.

.

.

_tbc._


End file.
